Chapter 8

Chapter 8 The Very First Fliers

Our faithful Guide reminds us that the Creator had pronounced:

God said, “Let birds fly above the earth in the open space of the atmosphere.” And God created every winged creature according to its kind.
God looked with satisfaction on what He saw. God blessed them saying, “Be fruitful and multiply. Let birds multiply throughout the earth.”
So there was an evening and a morning, and they comprised Day Five.

“Every winged creature!” our Observer exclaims in surprise. “Why, that would be more than 10,000 kinds, or bird species, and many more within each separate kind!”

He made them all, at least a pair of every kind ever seen in all of history! Right here on the Third Day. He made the sparrow and the crow, the goose and the crane. Each one, without exception! Every winged creature!

And the sky began to fill with happily flying birds! A pair of tiny hummingbirds here, a pair of giant whooping cranes there. And God had a smile on His face--from ear to ear, as it were--as He joyfully, and almost playfully it seemed, sent off a parade of colorful and amazingly different birds on their first flight!

“Why, we’ve always thought there were at most a handful that first day,” we burst out in surprise. “But more than 10,000 distinct kinds, with a large number of subspecies within each kind! That’s a huge number. Amazing!”

“Not beyond the reach of this Creator,” our Guide chimes in. “If He said it, He was able to do it. He was completely capable of fulfilling His word. He even separately designed each one!”

With tender loving care, God reached into His creative resources and, for the first time on Planet Earth, in an astonishing array of beauty, of song, of versatility, put on display the birds of the world!

Once again the Great Creator was demonstrating the distinctive nature of His new world--overflowing abundance! No skimping here! No sense of barely making it! Every bird, of every kind first appeared right here, on this Fifth Day!

Among these birds there was the gentle Blue Jay and the chattering Magpie,

the murmuring dove and the humble sparrow,

the quacking duck and the farmyard chicken,

the soaring eagle and the hooting owl.

They were all there, in pairs, in all their pristine beauty of gorgeous, colorful array on that Fifth Day. With endless variety, the Great Creator had made them all!

God thoroughly enjoyed Himself that day! He carefully constructed each one, gave to it the plumage of His choice, gave it a song to sing and a minutely crafted body, so it could help “fill the heavens”, as He had ordered.

Beneath all that colorful plumage and that minutely designed aerodynamic body was another marvel--a body so precisely prepared and so exactingly made as to fulfill, with a flair. the bird’s destiny--to fly! Its construction, with strong muscles joined to a specially designed body frame, obviously pointed to a bird not only flapping about, but rising on the amazing strength of its wings into the freedom of the sky!

Its body was extremely light, with specially designed hollow bones seen nowhere else in all creation. And an overall aero-dynamic design that allowed the bird to slip through the air in the most efficient manner imaginable!

“Look at those feathers!” exclaims our Guide. “So wonderfully and painstakingly designed for flying! Marvels of engineering genius, those bird feathers are extremely light and yet amazingly strong and resilient, clearly designed for the uplift needed when a bird ascends into the air.”

And just how did this all come about? Here begins a story so amazing, so totally God-like, as to leave us thunderstruck with amazement! It’s a story that could not have been told (in terms comprehensible to human readers at least) until 1963, when the last of two happenings cast a new light on God’s work of Creation.

Those Life Strands Again

First, was the making of a wondrous Life Strand.

What was so wondrous about it? It carried in “readable” form the entire life story of that bird, a detailed, living blueprint that not only defined the size and shape of every organ of the bird’s body. It also carried the instructions for the construction of each part of the bird’s body. These instructions when activated actually built that part of the body! They were more than just a blueprint. They were a true, living blueprint, directly from the Creator’s Hand!

This living blueprint not only included every part of the bird’s body, it provided a minute-by-minute set of instructions for every moment of the bird’s life history! And this included the color of the bird’s feathers, the size and shape of the body, and even the characteristics of its movements and its song! Absolutely comprehensive!

In this way, 300 million codons (or base pairs) of information, were translated into coded form, then placed on a Life Strand and preserved there. Remember, this Life Strand is a mere two meters in length and is usually rolled into a tiny ball, infinitesimally small, but ranking as one of God’s Mighty Marvels!

This then turns out to be Step One in the “three C’s” of that bird and its Life Strand story, the making of its DNA Strand.

Then along with the Creation and cataloguing of the Master Strand itself came the Copying (or replication) of the DNA millions of times over. Copies of it were placed in every cell throughout the body. And finally, the amazing Control feature of the Life Strand was activated by the Hand of God, with all of the information on the DNA Strand available and in exact sequence, all 300 million bits!

And when this happened, a new living creature began its time on earth!

It was just as God’s Word had said, “The life of every living thing is in His hand.” (Job 12:10)

As the Creator activates the Life Strand in these steps, the process with that one bird is complete. The precise pattern determined by the Creator Himself has been brilliantly and in detail incorporated into a living organism, an actual “bird body.”

And the acid test? That bird actually flies! Not falteringly, but with excitement and with a flourish, as it does its dives and curves and other amazing feats in the heavens above.

An Advanced Navigational System

Then we find that many of these feathered wonders possess another incredible gift, a highly developed navigational system! Near home, they quickly find their way back to their home nest, even when blown far off their usual path by a storm. Many of them make the long journey from North to South in search of ideal feeding grounds. And back again, from South to North, returning from their long trek, having flown thousands upon thousands of miles!

Birds are mentioned in the Bible over 300 times, often with a choice morsel of Spirit-given wisdom. One example,

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you. Go to the birds of the air and they will tell you.” (Job 7:12)